Pretrial Release Practices in the United States, 1976-1978 (ICPSR 7972)

Citation

Toborg, Mary A. Pretrial Release Practices in the United States, 1976-1978. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2005-11-04. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07972.v2

Summary

Funded by the National Institute of Justice, this data collection
represents Phase II of a larger project to evaluate pretrial release
practices. The
study focuses on four major topics: (1) release--rates and types of
releases, defendant or case characteristics and their impact on the
release decision, (2) court appearance --extent to which released
defendants appear in court, factors associated with defendants'
failure to appear in court, (3) pretrial criminality--number of
rearrests during the pretrial period and the factors predicting
rearrest, charges and rates of conviction for crimes committed during
the pretrial period, and (4) impact of pretrial release programs--effect of
programs on release decisions and on the behavior of defendants. The study
is limited to adult defendants processed through state and local trial
courts, and to pretrial release rather than pretrial intervention or
diversion programs. Part 1 is an analysis of release practices and
outcomes in eight jurisdictions (Baltimore City and Baltimore County,
Maryland, Washington, DC, Dade County, Florida, Jefferson County,
Kentucky, Pima County, Arizona, Santa Cruz County, California, and
Santa Clara County, California). The pretrial release "delivery
systems," that is, the major steps and individuals and organizations
in the pretrial release process, were analyzed in each jurisdiction.
Additionally, a sample of defendants from each site was studied from
point of arrest to final case disposition and sentencing. Part 2 of
this study examines the impact of the existence of pretrial release
programs on release, court appearance, and pretrial release outcomes.
An experimental design was used to compare a group of
defendants who participated in a pretrial release program with a
control group who did not. Experiments were conducted in Pima County
(Tucson), Arizona, Baltimore City, Maryland, Lincoln, Nebraska, and
Jefferson County (Beaumont-Port Arthur), Texas. In Tucson, separate
experiments were conducted for felony and misdemeanor cases.

Citation

Toborg, Mary A. Pretrial Release Practices in the United States, 1976-1978. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2005-11-04. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07972.v2

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Time Period(s)

Sample

Sites were chosen to reflect geographic dispersion, a
wide range of release types, and broad eligibility for program
participation.

Data Source

(1) personal interviews, (2) defendant court indices for local
jurisdictions, (3) program tracking records, (4) FBI and state rap sheets,
and (5) miscellaneous documents in court or program folders that indicate
a rearrest.

Data Type(s)

Original Release Date

1984-03-18

Version Date

2005-11-04

Version History

1997-02-25 SAS and SPSS data definition statements are now available
for this collection.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.

1984-03-18 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.

Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

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